Let’s make TT a shining example

THE EDITOR: While I continue to abhor this African/Indian/Black/White BS, I am satisfied that a lot of us in this country are not true citizens of Trinidad and Tobago but traitors, subversives and resident “maljo men.” I will digress and refer to some lifetime experiences.

(A) A few years ago my companion and I decided to drive from Miami to Atlanta then to South Carolina and back to Miami. While driving through rural Georgia in what is know as “redneck country” I came upon a huge service station and decided to use the washroom and purchase a beer. The owner/manager of the service station turned out to be a ‘real Indian’ ie from New Delhi, and his family owned a chain of service stations throughout the US. He was sent to manage the Georgia outlet. When I asked the gentleman to use the bathroom facility, he told me politely but with a pained look in his face that the locals would stuff coke cans in the toilet to make it unusable. My need was not urgent so I decided to hold it in. Then I asked him “How do you like working down here?” His reply was “Sir, people down here are uncouth and horrible, they call us niggers!”

(B) Have you heard of the “Twilight Zone?” Well, there were a number of local whites who migrated to the USA and to their horror they were called  “niggers.” They wanted to settle in certain areas but were not welcome and of course wanted to avoid the black areas. They looked around and found an area between North Miami Beach and West Palm Beach, which was suitable and soon a community of local whites was formed and eventually expanded with facilities such as schools, shopping centres, playing fields etc — the home of the twilight zoners. While living in Canada I used to travel home regularly to visit my mother and sister. On one occasion the lane was chockful of Trini-born Canadian residents or citizens. To my amazement after one Trini Canadian had cleared immigration, customs, etc, he ‘exited’ the arrival lounge (this was old Piarco), went to a nearby tree and started urinating on it, lapsing back to Trini lingo and saying, “Yuh know how long I want to do that!” In Canada he would have been hauled off to jail in handcuffs.

The reason for the above life experiences is to suggest to citizens of this country that not only do we owe allegiance to this place called Trinidad and Tobago, but each of us should pledge to do everything in our power to uplift it and make sure that no one denigrates it. We owe it to ourselves, our children and future generations to make this country a shining example to the rest of the world. How many of us who call ourselves Indians and Africans have Indian or African passports? To my mind, to talk about Indian and African is to be extremely stupid or divisive or both. To pretend to be white is to be like the crow in peacock feathers. We should all ask ourselves what would a patriotic citizen of Trinidad and Tobago do or not do - pee on a tree at Piarco Airport or on every lamppost, wall, fire hydrant etc, so that large areas of our country smell like urinals? Would a patriotic citizen dump bottles, coke cans, chicken and chips boxes and Styrofoam cups into every available place including nature trails so that the country now looks like one huge stinking garbage dump and the garbage chokes the drains causing flooding of the city every year?

Would a patriotic citizen disobey traffic laws, drive like lunatics and endanger and put in harms way other law abiding citizens? Would a patriotic citizen rob, murder and abuse his fellow citizen like cowardly jackals? Would a patriotic citizen become drug lords and make millions if not billions by turning his brothers and sisters into drug addicts? Would patriotic citizens permit successive governments to continue to misgovern, engage in mal-administration and squander our patrimony and resources and ruin the lives of the population especially the younger generations who are fast becoming dead end kids? I am sure no citizen who loves his country will permit the above or any of the unpatriotic dangerous or very stupid things that occur in this country every day. But then again, if we are Africans, Indians, pretend Trinis or birds of passage then we will have no problem carrying on with our unpatriotic acts and accepting wholesale mediocrity.

M HOTIN
St James